Re: A bit of advice re University and such is requested

On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 11:20:17PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> [snip]
> > At Cornell at least, the workload for CS and double-E are pretty
> > stiff...mainly because you *can't* predict debugging time.  Or at least I
> > never could.  Plays hob with any attempts to budget time.  :-/
> [snip]
>
> CS theory courses are a different can 'o worms, though. In general I'd
> say, pay a LOT of attention to required 1st/2nd year math courses. They
> are required for a reason -- you won't survive upper year theory courses
> unless you make sure you understand the math stuff in 1st/2nd year,
> tempting though it is to disregard them. Of course, IMNSHO upper year CS
> theory courses belong more in the math dept than CS, but that's another
> story... :-)
Depends.  CS theory at Cornell seems to mainly involve probability,
combinatorics and graph theory and discrete structures and sets, as well as
logic (Gödel, predicate logic,
induction, etc.).  The 1st 2 years of math at Cornell, OTOH, are mainly
calculus and linear algebra (this is true in engineering *and* arts &
sciences, unless you come in with a lot of AP's.  You see derivatives and
so on in some CS theory, but I wouldn't say you need a whole lot of it.
OTOH I never completed the CS program here, so YMMV.

YHL